Richland

James Robertson helped found Fort Nashborough in the spring of 1779, the settlement that grew into Nashville. He served as a brigadier general in the Southwest Territory militia and spent his later years as an Indian commissioner, dealing with the Cherokee. He died on September 1, 1814, near present-day Memphis. In 1825 his family moved his remains to the Nashville City Cemetery, where he is buried beside his wife Charlotte. This stop on Charlotte Pike marks a replica of the log house on his Richland Creek farm, put up for the 1996 state bicentennial.

What the plaque says

Richland 1.2 mile NE James Robertson built his cabin in 1779 at 23rd and Park. In October 1784 Robertson moved to his Richland Creek farm, living in the log structure until 1787, when the first brick house in Middle Tennessee was completed. Called Travellers' Rest until 1816, the brick house, which burned in 1902, was located inside his fort at 5904 Robertson Road. The two-story log house was dismantled in 1970. The replica at this site was erected during the 1996 Tennessee Bicentennial by the West Nashville Founders' Museum Association.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fisk University and Jubilee Hall — 5.1 mi
  The 1866 school for freed people whose Jubilee Singers paid for Jubilee Hall, a National Historic Landmark, and whose students helped start Nashville's sit-ins.
• Tennessee State Capitol — 6.1 mi
  William Strickland's Greek Revival capitol on Nashville's Capitol Hill, finished in 1859 and built from the bottom up with the labor of enslaved men.
• Civil Rights Room at the Nashville Public Library — 6.1 mi
  A room in the downtown library with a circular lunch counter, a timeline and oral histories of the 1960 Nashville sit-ins, a few blocks from the stores where they began.
• National Museum of African American Music — 6.3 mi
  A downtown Nashville museum, opened in 2021, tracing gospel, blues, jazz, rhythm and blues and hip-hop through Black history from 1619 to 2016.

More markers nearby

• Battle of Nashville: Charlotte Pike — 2.1 mi
• Richland Creek Bridge — 2.1 mi
• Belle Meade Plantation — 2.3 mi
• Belle Meade Plantation — 2.3 mi